Outline of the Book
How is the central message revealed throughout the book?
1. Chapters 1-24: The Transcendent LORD Judges Jerusalem
2. Chapters 25-32: The Transcendent LORD Confronts the Nations
3. Chapter 28 The Transcendent LORD’s Re-Revelation of the Seeds
4. Chapter 33: The Transcendent LORD’s Last Call for Israel to Repent
5. Chapters 34-48: The Transcendent LORD’s Glory through the Future Restoration of Israel
This is a very simple outline, but it is more than adequate for our purposes in this present writing. Before we start digging into the portions of the outline, we will give special attention to the first chapter as a foundational introduction to Ezekiel’s entire ministry.
Chapter 1 as an Introduction to the Prophecy
Our approach to chapter one will differ from our approach to the remainder of this powerful book in one key detail. That key detail lies in the fact that we will not attempt any consideration of the minutiae of this chapter. The reason for this decision is that the revelation of Himself that God gives in this chapter cannot be dissected with anything approaching certainty. All that would arise from the mind of studious men would be speculative. And we do well to choose not to speculate about God’s revelation of Himself. We need only read it reverently and prayerfully.
Rather than speculate about what all of these elements mean, we will do better to simply contemplate what this staggering revelation as a whole suggests to us about the God that is revealing Himself here.[1] There are several simple things that ought to strike us keenly.
The first detail that is clear in this passage about God is the title LORD. It is used three times in the passage, twice in verse three, and once in verse twenty-eight. This is significant because it is the name that He always uses in the Old Testament scriptures to identify Himself in His unrelenting commitment to His worldwide redemptive purposes through Israel. In the revelation of Himself to Ezekiel in this vision, God makes it abundantly apparent that He is still pursuing His redemptive purposes. Nothing about that plan has changed due to Israel once again being enslaved. We must sustain a strong redemptive focus as we study scripture.
The second detail that is clear in this passage about God is that He is transcendent and that man has no frame of reference that suffices to fully understand His Being. Certain aspects of this vision seem similar to aspects of the revelation of Christ in Revelation chapter one.[2] It is a mistake, in my opinion, to try to reduce these overwhelming revelations down to some kind of understandable paradigm. Instead, we do well to hold strongly to the Truth that:
Christ is God, and God is transcendent.
If Israel had not departed from this one truth [from what Ezekiel reveals in this passage] it would have been life-changing. The same is true for Christians today. But as soon as we attempt to bring such revelations into some kind of focus that our minds can ‘handle’ we break down the unbridgeable chasm between the Being of God and the mortality of man. Our highest thoughts of God, we may be sure, fall far below the reality of His Being.
As we have previously suggested, this is precisely the root cause of Israel’s captivity in Babylon. Their views of God had so deteriorated that their God was seen among the heathen as being no more that another ‘tribal deity’ comparable to those around them. In fulfilling His redemptive plan, it was [and is] essential that God never be seen as the same as all the heathen deities in the world. None of those deities could hope to deliver mankind from sin and its terrible enslavement. Instead, they add to the bondage. No, the true God, the only delivering God, is far above all such abominations. It is for this reason that God begins as He does in this revelation of Himself to Ezekiel and to Israel in this first chapter of the book.
The third detail that is clear in this passage is not directly concerning God, but needs our attention. It is the usage of several Hebrew words.
The first of these is דְּמוּת (demooth). The word is used twenty-five times in the Old Testament, and is translated likeness, fashion, similitude, like, like as and manner. Thirteen uses of the word are in Ezekiel, and ten of those are here in this first chapter, all translated likeness.
The second is the word מַרְאֶה (mareh). It is used one-hundred three times in the Old Testament, and is translated using such words as vision, look upon and appearance. Ezekiel uses it twenty times, fifteen of them in this first chapter. In chapter one all uses are translated appearance.
Thus, we have the usage of the English words: likeness and appearance twenty-five times in the twenty-eight verses of this chapter. In idiomatic English today, this would equate to saying “It looked like.” Ezekiel was not attempting to communicate details for us to dissect endlessly and hypothetically. He was seeking to put into words what he saw, and used the best words available to him to describe the vision. Clearly, such a vision is not intended for speculative analysis. We do well to remember that when God communicates His words to man, he is not equipping them with fodder for their theological discussions.[3]
God was seeking to bring Israel to repentance. But sadly, in the churches today we have been misled regarding the true meaning of the repentance that God demands in man. Our focus has become one of getting folks to turn away from specific aspects of sin in their lives: Don't do this, don't go here or there, don't drink, smoke, take drugs, etc. But a person can cease from doing all of these things and still not rightly regard God for Who He is.
It is commonplace now to encounter many church members that have “changed their behavior” but have not really changed how they “regard God.” This is a product of shallow, man-centered evangelism predicated upon such foolishness as:
1. Asking the sinner, “Would you go to heaven if you died right now?”
2. Getting the sinner to answer a list of leading questions: [I.E.- The ‘Romans Road’]
Are you a sinner?
Do you realize that all sinners go to Hell?
Do you regret being the way you are?
Did you know that God doesn’t want anyone to go to Hell?
Did you know that God has made a way for sinners to NOT go to Hell?
Etc.
In all such shallow evangelism, God is never really revealed as He actually is. The impression conveyed is certainly not at all as we see Him portrayed here in Ezekiel chapter one. Any form of so-called ‘repentance’ that does not begin with seeing God for Who He actually is, and rightly regarding Him as God, is False Repentance. Consider Romans 1:18-21.
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them.
20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, …
Pay particular attention to the underlined words. God’s eternal power and Godhead are openly known among men, making them without excuse in that their response has been that ‘they glorified [glorify] Him not as God!’ This is what we mean in the above diagram by the words in the foundation: “I change how I regard God.” Apart from this foundational change in a man, altering his behavior is nothing more than ‘turning over a new leaf,’ as the human proverb goes. Unregenerate men do this all the time without ever altering how they regard God.
Israel had become ‘comfortable’ in their supposed ‘relationship’ with Jehovah. They saw themselves as ‘God’s people,’ going all the way back[4] to the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. As we have seen, they had heard the ‘truth’ for many generations and had become extremely complacent in their shallow grasp of its implications in their lives. Giving this vision to Israel through Ezekiel, Jehovah was seeking to alter how they regarded Him, the doorway into genuine repentance.
It is intended to affect us, in much the same way that it must have impacted Ezekiel. Our reaction ought to be something like, “Oh my! How could my views of God have become so pathetic and naïve?!”[5] When we in the churches today react to this stunning self-revelation of God in Ezekiel one with pure speculation about what all of these details ‘might mean,’ rather than falling on our faces before the all-mighty God in His utter transcendence and Godhead, we are revealing that our hearts are exactly where the hearts of those in Israel were then: cold and aloof.
While leaving the details to have their divinely-ordained purpose to stun us, we do well to give serious attention to Ezekiel’s last statement in this chapter. We find it in verse twenty-eight.
This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. And when I saw it, I fell upon my face…
Ezekiel himself plainly tells us that everything that he has already said is simply an attempt to put into human language a description of ‘the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD.’ He was not saying that his description IS the glory of the LORD. He was saying that his description was the ‘appearance’ of the ‘likeness’ of the glory of the LORD. His exact wording suggests that he himself realized that his description was at least two steps removed from the reality he was seeking to describe.[6] This statement by Ezekiel ought to forever silence any foolish speculation regarding the meaning of the details of this description.
[1] I have encountered all manner of wild theorizing regarding such details as these (and those in the book of Revelation). Such things as aliens, helicopters and advanced military tanks, etc. But in what way do such unrestrained speculations edify or build up the faith of the saints?
[2] Compare verses 24-28 with Revelation 1:12-20
[3] One might well ask, “What good could it have possibly done for the Hebrew people that heard Ezekiel’s preaching to start speculating about what all of these details might have meant?”
[4] Approximately 1100 to 1200 years.
[5] Once again, this reflects what the Lord Jesus Christ later spoke of as the church at Ephesus [Revelation 2] having left ‘its first love.’
[6] One of my beloved Bible teachers [Frank Sells] used to tell us that every human attempt to illustrate or describe the things of God falls far short of the reality it is seeking to illustrate or describe. As an example, he suggested the attempts to illustrate the doctrine of the Trinity by saying “It is like an egg: Three parts- shell, egg-white and yolk;” or “It is like the sun- There is the sun itself [God the Father], the Light of the sun [God the Son] and the warmth of the sun [God the Spirit].” All such meager human attempts to illustrate the things of God fall far short, and may even do serious damage.